The use of computers within our society is becoming commonplace. Businesses frequently use computers to perform many tasks, including data storage, calculations, document creation, communications and the like. Similarly, more and more personal computer users rely extensively on computers to keep track of financial records, to manage personal documents, to surf the Internet and to accomplish communications, such as e-mail communications.
Sending, receiving, and composing e-mail has become one of the primary uses for computers today. Over the past decade, use of e-mail for business, academic, and personal communications has skyrocketed. Many computer users have one or more e-mail addresses for receiving e-mail for business, or for personal reasons.
The use of e-mail for sending information generally involves the steps of addressing an e-mail to one or more intended recipients, composing the body of the email, and possibly adding one or more attachments to the e-mail. An addressed e-mail may then be sent to the intended recipient. Upon receipt of an e-mail, a user may view the e-mail on a display device or print the e-mail to a connected printer for hardcopy reading. Other functions, such as e-mail forwarding, responding, or saving the e-mail may also be included as features found with a program for handling e-mail communications.
A received e-mail typically consists of two or more parts that may be distinctly separated: a body and a signature. The body of the e-mail might consist of a message or other information that the e-mail composer wishes to convey to an e-mail recipient. The signature of the e-mail may consists of information describing the origin of the e-mail, the time the e-mail was sent, or other information that identifies the e-mail as a unique e-mail. An e-mail may also consist of additional components such as attachments, or files, that an e-mail composer wishes to communicate to the e-mail recipients.
Typically, an e-mail signature is included with an e-mail as a separate file, or an attached file. However, an e-mail signature may be included with the body of an e-mail in a Multipurpose Internet Mail Extension file, or MIME file, which is read by an e-mail program being used to view the e-mail. Reading the MIME file, the e-mail program strips the body of the e-mail and displays it on a visual monitor for a user to read. The signature may be ignored by the program.
In other instances, a customized signature may be included with an email message. Many e-mail composition programs allow users to create or define a signature to be attached to any e-mails sent by the user of the e-mail program. A user may choose to automatically include the customized signature with each e-mail, or to only include the signature on certain e-mails when the user selects to include the customized signature. Customized signatures created in such a manner are typically displayed at the end of the body of the email.
Frequently, users print e-mails to a printer or copier to create a hardcopy of the e-mail for archival purposes or for reading at a later date. Often times, the formatting of a printed e-mail depends upon the e-mail program being used to receive and print the e-mail. However, most e-mail programs print the e-mail address of the sender and the recipient, along with the date of the e-mail and the subject line of the email, before printing the body of the e-mail. If a customized signature is included with the e-mail, the customized signature is typically printed following the e-mail body.
E-mail printed using the typical printing techniques may be identified by the recipient and sender addresses printed along with the body of the e-mail. Alternatively, a printed e-mail may be identified by a customized signature printed at the end of the e-mail body. This, however, requires that a user flip to the last page of a printed e-mail in order to identify who the printed e-mail belongs to.
In some instances, it may be desirable to separately identify an e-mail during printing. It may also be desirable to identify any attachments printed along with an e-mail as originating from that e-mail. Thus, an improved system and method for printing emails and attachments is desirable.